Digital Signature technique is used for authentication and validation of an electronic message, software and digital document. Handwritten signatures are used to certify physical documents. Similarly, digital signatures are used to certify and approve the content of digital documents such as portable document format (pdf), e-mails and word documents. Digital signature depends on encryption and decryption techniques. Encryption is the process of converting the information into a cipher text through encryption techniques such as public key encryption and symmetric or private key encryption. Decryption is the process of converting the cipher text back to the information text through the key issued at the time of encryption. Digital signature contains digital ID which include a public and a private key. The public key is sent with the file and private key acts as digital signature to the digital document. The public key contains encrypted code ‘hash’ that verifies the identity and tracks changes pertaining to the document.

Before the advent of digital signature, the business and legal documents have to be physically signed and were sent through courier. This process was time consuming and risk of loss during transportation was high. With the help of digital signature, the organizations could send legal contracts and business documents with proper authentication and less risk. With certain jurisdiction authorities such as The Federal Court of the U.S. and The Supreme Court of Canada, accepting digitally signed documents as an evidence for any crime, the digital signature market is expected to have a significant growth. Digital signature could help in financial and legal sector in reducing document turnaround time, improve compliances and could speed up invoice process. This would further drive the growth of digital signature market in financial and legal sector. The growth of E-Commerce sector in the global market could also drive the growth of digital signature market. However, the major challenge faced by digital signature market would be expiry of the technology used for formulation of digital signature. Incompatibility among various digital signature generation techniques could further hamper the growth of market. The developing countries such as Philippines and Brazil have weak cyber laws, thus could restraint the growth of market.

Digital signature market is broadly segmented on the basis of solution, deployment type and geography. On the basis of solution, the market i s segmented into hardware, software and services. On the basis of deployment type, the digital signature market could be segmented on the basis of on-premise, web based and cloud deployment. Moreover, in terms of geographies the global digital signature market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America regions. Heavy adoption of digital signature technology is seen in North America market due to strong cyber laws and tremendous growth in financial sector in this region. Latin America market has the least adoption of digital signature technology due to weak and unstandardized cyber laws in this market.